Twelve Days of Carnivore!


#563

so true. I had to rein life back from social media and heck I never watch the news anymore. One day I had to ditch it, I just couldn’t take the drama over and over. I opted out of ‘alot of modern life’ around me LOL


#564

Sigh.
I often doesn’t understand why people ruin good food with such things.
And I don’t even have problems with plants. BUT if I want some meat, I don’t want the flavor overpowered with herbs or garlic or whatever. I don’t even want any herb or garlic around it.
I have experience with the herb problem, I still remember a probably otherwise good homemade sausage with a ton of rosemary. It was years before I even tried carnivore but it doesn’t matter. It was barely edible, it was way, way too much. It was very unpleasant, I only ate meat a few times a year then and only homemade stuff. And I totally adore good homemade sausage (the soft, raw kind that should be fried and eaten in bigger quantities), I was looking forward to the yearly experience and I got so disappointed. My body can handle the carbs, I just hate when the nice meat is ruined with not only unnecessary but unpleasant things. That’s bad enough but extra problems? Awful.

I feel sorry for you, Fangs but now you eat well and hopefully you can plan better in the future…? I mean, not eating out or only at really reliable places…
I wasn’t even in a restaurant since ages, I am mostly at home and I prefer my own food, it’s too hard to cook for me.

I often watch cooking videos and I understand the desire to add zillion things to everything less and less. Carnivore food can be extremely simple and perfect.

But I came to tell you all that I brought my piglet home! My knees aren’t happy, I don’t know why was this mere 2 hours cycling so hard on me (I am rusty, that’s true. didn’t use my bicycle since Alvaro had the accident with his, I stopped and still didn’t resume my weightlifting either…).
But the tiny piglet is 9 kg (all the others were around 20kg)!
Marinade was mentioned. Oh my. I always just roast my meat without anything special. I go and try to figure out if it’s needed, complicated, how it is done… I never ever even tasted a piglet and I used a marinade once and never again. But not for a piglet.
No organs came with it, well I mean the ones easy to get out :slight_smile: It has a tiny brain, I will taste that :smiley:

My eating is a tad better now, still not carnivore but hopefully it will change soon. We both still don’t really want meat but it will be fine when the piglet will be roasted, I am sure. I ate eggs, dairy and liver. Liver is so special, I can eat it when I can’t eat more than a tiny amount of normal meat. As it’s very different. And I can’t get bored of it easily :wink:
Alvaro had salmon for Christmas, I only tasted it. And we couldn’t eat all the 2 pounds of beef in the last 4 days. It’s very tasty but nope, we couldn’t eat meat beyond a few little bites sometimes. Except the mentioned liver and a few slices of sausage. But I think we regenerated now. I will make sure to eat plenty of eggs and dairy in the future to avoid this. December is special anyway (well, not my best month… I have hopes for the next one ;)) but it would be very bad every month…

[…]
Oh I didn’t send this.
I looked up marinades and they just looks pointless. But all the piglet for New Year’s Ever recipes agreed about using beer or something. Mostly beer but champagne was mentioned. (Well everyone and their mother uses garlic too and I totally won’t.)
We will experiment a bit.
Tomorrow Alvaro has a lots of carby stuff to eat so I just boil a half piglet head, I am curious. And the next day comes the piglet with its tender meat and maybe crunchy skin. That is the goal but I can’t even make chicken skin crunchy following recipes… So I must invent mine (even without spices, there are so many variables). If I want to fry or bake my food until it gets some nice color, that usually takes ages. I have read about frying chicken liver again today. Everyone else seems to live in a different world with different physics. Using a long time will make it hard and chewy??? No force can make chicken liver chewy I think. Firmness can happen, I like that. I wouldn’t call that hard though… But chewy? Beef is chewy or undercooked pork. Never the soft, almost melting chicken liver. Oh well. I figured that out for myself. I need to do that with chicken and piglet skin. (Roasted pork is something nearly impossible to do wrong. Some people surely find the way but it’s pretty straightforward.)

That takes a special family… Alvaro can cook and anyway, he is stubborn like me. It doesn’t matter what I cook, he will eat his carbs too. He would miss “something” just eating the other foods as I would miss fat if I ate low-fat food (but mine is a deeper need. I need fat itself while he can eat certain low-carb meals without any problem. only certain ones. meal requires lots of carbs, for example but there is some wriggle room regarding the amount). So still zero low-carb day in his life (I make a 2021 goal to make a low-carb day for him :smiley: or a January one. just because it bothers me sometimes, I dislike ignoring my plans. but it’s a bit pointless as it takes a very artificial, unbalanced menu for that day).
He probably would try something if he wouldn’t thrive on his woe, he is very health-conscious and a bit vain too… But he would suffer on low-carb, at least in the beginning, it seems. Giving up bread or added sugar is nothing. But low-carb… That’s tricky.

:smiley: I stopped tracking after November… I probably will look at my numbers sometimes when I eat simple enough and I can… But it’s so nice not to. I eat simpler on carnivore but fatty meat is super hard to track (impossible but I can do an educated guess most of the time with lots of extra work). Even the very lean liver is impossible to track as I eat some unknown part of the fat added to it. And it’s not like tracking help with losing fat in my case… It was useful, informative, sometimes fun too but usually just a pain in the ass, waste of time and not eating what I exactly want as I can’t track that.

I planned to track my meat (vaguely. I ignore the processed ones, for example as it’s minimal nowadays anyway) but it’s easier and nicer not to do even that. If I lived alone, it would be easier, I could weigh all I have. I did that when I was alone after Alvaro’s accident… I very vaguely guessed the aspic, though, I probably can do that with meat all the time. I don’t need some even remotely exact number.

I should keep my calories “low” but it has nothing to do with tracking (and very much with the size of my eating window and eating very low-carb) and it won’t happen anyway (but I avoid overeating easily if I don’t eat very wrong and that is a big thing for me. healthy too. cheaper… no downsides at all, just benefits). I need to gain muscles then :slight_smile: I resume my weightlifting tomorrow.

I still have no idea what deep ketosis is and I don’t know why it matters. Fat adaptation is cool, I want that, ketosis isn’t really important for me but if I eat low-carb enough, I surely will be in ketosis. I want to feel good, it was always the driving force behind my woe changes. What else would be important? Following some weird woe to a T to get some badge or appreciation? Of course I want to feel good and I don’t believe anyone, I believe my own body (sometimes, if the science is too strong and believable and understandable, I make changes according to that but only if I don’t mind and my body agrees. I gladly try out things that seem reasonable and possible for me).

I am not surprised, people may feel very very differently about food on carnivore, I am still amazed how much it changed me (and I didn’t even do it “right” or long at all and still, huge changes happened).

I don’t eat beef as I can’t afford it but I find that way too chewy anyway (at least what I tried this far). It’s tasty if done well but a little is enough and I am very choosy if it comes to beef. But it’s me. I LOVE pork, always did. As long as it has the right fat percentage (added fat doesn’t really help) and it’s “good pork” (probably breed, raising/feeding are important factors). I eat chicken because it’s dirt cheap and it’s nice paired with my pork. But it’s weak, it can’t satiate or satisfy me alone.
If I could eat whatever I wanted, I probably would eat lots of pork, some fowls and mutton. And some beef but in small amounts. Until I would change, it can happen. I barely ate beef in my whole life and it was rarely cooked in a way I like, it was not the best part sometimes (very chewy)… I surely will give it changes in the distant future. And keep eating a nice beef stew regularly (or mutton if I can get some).

There are cultural differences too. People here eat mostly pork (and chicken), it’s what widely available, beef is way harder to find and steak is a luxury item. And pork isn’t the same everywhere, I’ve read articles about how pig fat is different if the breed and feeding is different, it probably matters a lot.

[…]
Next day. Oti came and brought a ton of food, even for the cats (so we will find bone fragments on our doormat in the next day but the cats will be happy)… We won’t buy food in the foreseeable future except eggs and maybe a pepper… We have everything and a lot.
She brought a lot of stuffed cabbage rolls (my old fav… except I never liked the stuffing. I wasn’t a rice fan at all and never could try it without it as a kid… so I mostly ignored the stuffing and added a ton of sour cream. the version used in this country is a very good traditional food - without the rice - but I find it unnecessary complicated and too vegetable-y nowadays. we use almost always sauerkraut here) that I put into the freezer (that’s it, it’s full now. not totally but I can’t put anything on top of the half piglet, it has a weird shape and things would fall out and break. one day I will have a bigger freezer at the bottom of my fridge. mine is on the top and little boxes jump into their death sometimes).
But she brought duck roast too! That will be useful :slight_smile: Alvaro started to complain about eating meat all the time but I reminded him we barely ate any meat last week and I really don’t mind eating most of the meat myself in the foreseeable future :D. And anyway, roasts don’t spoil easily, that’s good. And if I get out the small hen from the freezer (I want soup), I will have room to put something in. Alvaro hopes a tender piglet is easy to eat as well… He never ate a small piglet ever either. Except a wild one. I don’t remember what that was like.

I had some tiny meal before my main one just now, I fried the boiled piglet brain (Alvaro was curious but not enthusiastic when I told him I have boiled piglet brain… and as far as I know, brain is usually eaten fried or something similar) - it was very similar to chicken brain… maybe a tad tastier but that may be the lard I used and the frying itself - and some hake fish that I can’t cut off from the spine, I always fry the meaty bones immediately and eat the meat. What the cat find tempting after I get off the fried meat I can’t imagine but they are enthusiastic…
We roast (a quarter of) the piglet tomorrow, I can’t wait :slight_smile: I am super curious and ready to eat some roast again.

By the way, Oti said the deal with the small fridge isn’t off, just delayed. She will get her bigger/better one eventually and then we can have the mini one. But it’s not that important for us at this point, we can buy meat in smaller quantities as we don’t get them from a farm most of the time. And half a mutton fits even this one and it’s the last year we still keep boxes of fruit there. They are pretty much unneeded at this point, a few berries are useful for decoration or extra flavor but that’s it. Alvaro usually uses different fruits, not frozen berries so they just take up valuable space there (and I get stressed when I realize in May that we have a lot of boxes and the new season is coming. I ate up only the raspberries but not in the last 2 winters). I don’t really keep vegetables in the freezer anymore so that’s good.

I honestly didn’t know the herbs could be so bad to people…

I was curious about the price, thanks for the info. Yep, it’s horribly expensive to me. 10 dollars should last half a week in my case (I always spent that much money for food, I imagine it’s normal here if one cooks for themselves and rarely chooses luxury items. very poor people with family spend way less but eating is important for me and my situation isn’t THAT horrible)… It’s 10kg chicken thigh or pig liver on a good sale… 3 kg pork (not chuck, that’s more expensive but shoulders or chops)… About 80 eggs (so I spend half my food money on eggs when I have a really eggy time)… I saw ribeye somewhat cheaper here so more than one pound of ribeye but way less than two.
But I will try it one day. It’s not likely I could go anywhere near to my beloved pork chuck but I am still curious.

But we can do this on any woe - unless on bad ones where we get stupid urges but we shouldn’t do those.
Well, not we as I am unable to wait for hunger most of the time… But carnivore makes it more easier to wait for a real urge even if it’s not hunger. That’s cool. Carbs make me eat without ANY real need and that sucks. But it’s not the same with everyone. It’s too obvious what I should do except some finetuning, I will need to figure that out.
I like feel real hunger now and then but it probably never will happen often.

I will think about my January goals later and write them there.
Obviously, I will come and be good (for me, at least but I can always hope) in January :smiley: It’s the easiest month for me, by far! Just like June and December is impossible to do in a very low-carb way at this point.
I won’t try super hard and super strict but it will be good.
I want to try eating (at least) one pound of meat for a while too. I couldn’t do it in November for some reason. My best chances are tomorrow and the next days so maybe I start it earlier. We will see.

I didn’t read everything but well, it’s surely is a looooooooong monster already. Sorry. But at least I come rarely, it’s good for my food addiction too (not like I don’t spend hours in the kitchen every day. I so don’t want that in January. December is special).


#565

The best ribeye I ever had was in Budapest. By far. I don’t know how it was raised or or where, but it was absolutely perfect.

The average person where I live spends about 10 per day on food. (That does not account for Starbucks and booze.) The people tend to be relatively slender and relatively stressed out.

Eggs can be had for about 6.00 for 60 for conventionally raised. Or you can buy a dozen for your 6.00 but they will be organic and pastured.
I eat them for medicine so I go pastured.

(The HOA of my development prohibits raising one’s own chickens. The bastards!)

I have done all my eating for the day:

16 oz ribeye 10.00
One raw egg .50
Sardines .97
(Tinned in water)

Round it up to 12 USD - If I were to do ground beef instead of ribeye approximately 7 USD for the day.


(UsedToBeT2D) #566

I like the thought process. Feeling hungry is good for us.


#567

The 80 eggs are from good sources. I may be not nearly as choosy as before regarding meat but I want quality eggs as always. I could buy way more normal eggs with the same money. But they don’t even taste nearly as good. Good eggs aren’t super expensive here and they are worth it! :slight_smile: So I stick with them.

That’s already not an uncommon salary here so many people go way lower but it’s easily doable. I never felt the need to spend more money on my food and I had way more money before… But I rather rode my motorbike more :slight_smile: I was almost a vegetarian that time…
Meat prices are interesting, I wrote about that before. Some meat is so cheap I would think very poor folks eat it all the time and others are horribly expensive without being extremely special. Beef and most seafood is very costly here. And it can’t be explained with things like chicken is easy to raise as both chicken and eggs are expensive in some countries.
But vegetables are often quite expensive (even though we have lots of fertile lands). It’s hard to get one that is cheaper than chicken thighs and it’s mostly just water, more or less sugar, fiber, not something useful for a hungry me. It is only worth it as a spice or fun bite, not as normal food. Cucumber is the worst, it has about nothing in it, it’s almost pure water as far as I know :slight_smile: And it costs about as much as chicken liver… I eat a thin slice of cucumber or two sometimes (crunchy water. I like crunchy water and no, ice doesn’t cut it) but it still has little worth (especially the one I can buy in winter) and if I lived alone, I never would buy any.

Internet… I am with you and Fangs. Once I had to make a FB account for work. The coworkers instantly started to bury me under some not interesting crap so it lasted for a week, maybe, I had to test something on our site and that’s it.
I use FB now but with Alvaro’s account and I use it for chatting with a few people and looking at a single group. Alvaro use it even less. He had 2 FB friends for years :smiley:

I watch YT, mostly music, history, science, food, art… That’s good unless I get carried away. I am a curious one so it’s easy to get my attention.

My problem was fanfics (I always was prone to read too much… without stopping. it was very fortunately I got The Lord of the Rings in separate books, one at a time when I was a kid) and food related forums (I spent several hours day after day talking with silly ones at my worst, it was awful. stupid not hedonistic compulsions) but I am fine now, it’s not excessive but I must come back with photos of my food in the near future, our big piglet show and experience starts today!
The star will be very simple. Alvaro considers using herby oil inside the piglet (well it’s outside now as it is in 6 pieces) definitely a bad idea so we are in complete agreement. And spices outside totally unnecessary. We don’t even have sugary veggies to put it under :smiley: Maybe a tiny onion. A good farm piglet must have its own tender baby pig flavors, why to add anything? Except the beer as every recipe says so. So we try that. And the tiny onion, probably.

Stopping tracking worked wonderfully. Whenever I stopped it before (before it’s not proper living for a lazy hedonist and I needed breaks), I automatically resumed shortly after. Now I stopped for weeks and I feel a serious diversion to track again but it’s impossible with fatty meat with various amount of skin anyway. I still try to track the amount of meat but if I lose patience, I will just track our total meat consumption, Alvaro’s and mine. That’s way easier and still informative a bit. At some point he will have enough and leave almost all meat to me anyway, probably.

That can be very painful… I accidentally stumbled upon certain sites… The stupidity was killing me quite often.
Then came keto and carnivore, lots of personal experiences and some scientific knowledge… And now almost anything about healthy eating or losing fat is painful to read.

I have unusually strong and unusual headaches lately. I managed to lower the surface stress, my mood is surprisingly good, I don’t need a reason for that, it’s pure self-protection, it seems… And Alvaro gets better anyway… But in the deep, I am not okay. My body shouldn’t and doesn’t want to get sick, it always gets rid of these bad mental/emotional things through headaches. I hope it will be better soon. It’s not THAT bad, I am just super bad with pain, I find feeling okay about all the time the expected, normal behaviour. And I can’t do weightlifting with a headache.
I just hope getting back to track eating wise will do something good. I don’t think these are correlated, they never were but every little thing may help a bit.

So I will have duck and piglet today (and tomorrow unless we eat up all the duck, it’s not so much), both roasted, maybe a few eggs too but we have lots of piglet meat, it must be in the focus.
The pig head didn’t make good soup but it’s more like for aspic, it’s mostly bones and skin, after all. Head cheese starts similarly just with more meat (at least I prefer the meatier version).


#568

food yesterday was

12 oz NY Strip steak
few slices taylor ham
6 slices bacon topped with a little shredded melted cheddar
peel and eat shrimp
can of tuna
beef stick

just doing the zc thing and feeling better now. All systems on good go :slight_smile: kinda just waiting for the new year…finish off this holiday season and freakin’ stop saying holiday season LOL

nothing to report. All fine in my zc world right now. hit store, no good meat sales but I checked for the day change today and NY Strip Steaks are on a good low sale for this week…yes I am going to do a steak run later. Plus they have snow crab legs on sale, not a great markdown sale at all but I need a few packages cause I am in the mood for some. Going to hair stylist at 12…will hit grocery store on way home, go right by it and steak and crab on sale prices is a must must must for me…great way to head into the new year :slight_smile: steak and crab. yum.


#569

Good Morning!

Started the day with ribeye, sardines and eggs. (I don’t notice how smokey I make the house until my husband wakes up yelling.)
Maybe I will try my next ribeye raw. :woman_shrugging:t2:

I am actually serious. :joy:


#570

I smoke the house every day LOL

I tried raw, not a fan, just me but in the end of it all I still love a super fast crispy fry on both sides and blue rare almost raw in the middle…but all raw I just miss that darn crispy so much, but heck yea, try it, you might just love it, not a darn thing wrong with that. Many love raw!


#571

I am attracted to the minimalism of it.

But mostly…I just want to eat in peace, quiet and solitude.

(We like our steaks the same way!)


#572

don’t worry, in time the hubby’s zip the lips. they have no choice.
my hubby would say turn on that vent…open a window…swing the back door to get the smoke out and more, now he doesn’t say a word. He knows what he says holds no change to how I cook and want my steaks. It boiled down to me just not listening to him and just truly ignoring him HAHA In the end I won :wink: They all give up in the end ya know!!


#573

My husband has IBS-C and really craves carbs. He wants to start the day with 5 waffles and…sometimes it ends there. Five waffles. I make them myself so I know there is an egg in there. And some butter. Otherwise… Paste.

On occasion I can cajole him to eat some chicken, fish…every so often a steak.

In result he feels unwell, nearly always.
I feel guilty for waking him up, and didn’t push back.
I just apologized.

He and I could definitely take lessons from you. He in not following the news avidly and living on an emotional edge and I in not allowing guilt to creep in. :butterfly:

Every so often I do feel guilty about zero carb. I am “supposed” to be eating huge salads and jogging.
I want your attitude!

But in time…Today I earned my “30 Day Zero Carb Chip” :raised_hands:t2:


(Laurie) #574

Turn on the fan. Kitchen fumes never used to bother me, but now they make my eyes hurt. It’s pretty unpleasant.


#575

I did have the fan on. But it wasn’t sufficient. As you say, some people are more sensitive. I have had to stop using fragrance, hairspray, nail polish…various cleaning supplies…


(Laurie) #576

I’ve had to insist that people close the door between the kitchen and the rest of the house. (I know that most houses nowadays don’t even have a kitchen door!) My room is far from the kitchen, but I had to put weather stripping around my door and stuff a blanket where the door doesn’t quite reach the floor.

I used to be pretty indestructible. Having silly health problems is humbling.


#577

yea that comes with time. I was worried that not eating unsatisfying salads would make me fatter BUT I sure know that old wives tale on nutrition sure isn’t true. I am always ‘low fat’ type til I flipped and learned real truths on what the body wants.

you read up at Justmeat.com

it has SO much info that it is truly eye opening where NOW I CAN not even think on eating weeds LOL that is the food my food eats HAHA

Yea my hubby is IBS for sure and he is a diverticulitus person…omg the grief on it all. my hubby ‘craps’ 5-6 times per day, has to ‘run’ to the bathroom and we ‘tried’ it all from meds to I got him to do zero carb for like a few days and HE FELT better and no bathroom issues and then he says…it isn’t I dropped it all, must be gluten so he bought gluten free crap and it didn’t help and OMG those products were expensive. He never 'got the fact that carbs/plants are his nightmare, well, he won’t truly accept it cause he wants to eat that food.

your hubby, waffles, oh yea, my hubby would be right there eating the same as yours LOL

at some point I say I am gonna leave him behind and live my life on the energy good side and he can find bathrooms and be a slug, but I ain’t waiting for him anymore.

one goal for me, go into retirement full speed and healthy and thing is I WANT him there with me but it won’t go down that way truly and it makes me sad, but I ‘self care’ me older I get…cause only ourselves in full truth is all we got and if I go down, I can’t help him who won’t help himself ya know

I tell ya Ella, I could scream from the rooftop on this subject :wink:


#578

I get that for me. I get headache triggers thru sinus from smells.

one time walking thru hardware store we hit the fertilizer section outside in landscaping and that smell…within 5 mins. I had a headache and felt sick.

smell triggers are big for some truly, I sure get that but in the end, I say leave the house for the few minutes it takes me to make my food, pony up and give that to me or suffer LOL yea I don’t take ‘too much’ of it all from my hubby when it truly impacts me in a very big way ya know…I give in alot and more, but my food, my food!!! MY FOOD! haha

sorry others have to adapt around that cause I sure adapt around everything else in the house :star_struck:


#579

True, true true!


#580

Thanks for all of the beef advice the other day - really useful!

I went all in and purchased a LOT of steaks. I was fearful my online delivery wouldn’t fill the order, but they all came - so it’s a steak house here for the next week or so!

I cook my steak in ghee now - there’s still some smoke, but it’s dramatically reduced from when I used to use butter. Might be worth a shot.


#581

true, ghee is a better version of ‘butter’ cause it takes out the casein and milk proteins and more, you get the real butter fat of butter so yes, many thrive on ghee for sure!

I also hit a fab deal. My NY Strip steaks went low cost sale and I hit them up…saved me about $82 in savings off my purchase…and yes I will go back for more for the freezer cause I basically wiped out all the good steaks, left a few ‘iffy’ packs to my eyes LOL

Came home and hubby says he is having steak and eggs and I thought, OMG I need more steaks, he is hitting one up on me HAHA

Happy you are doing great Septimuis! Eat well, eat hearty and we heal :slight_smile:


#582

This made me chuckle :grin:

And yeah, I still can’t believe how great I feel. Off for my second steak of the day now!